Blankenbaker Lecture on Professional Responsibility

2013 Blankenbaker Lecture (video)

April 15, 2013 UM Law Welcomes Mr. Keith M. Harper at 4 pm in Room 201, Law Building 

Keith Harper is a partner at Kilpatrick Townsend in Washington, D.C., who focuses his practice on litigation and Native American affairs, representing tribes and individual Indians. A member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, he continues to serve as class counsel in the landmark Indian trust funds lawsuit, Cobell v. Kempthorne, a case that recently settled for an aggregate $3.4 billion. 

Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Harper was a litigator at the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) in the Washington, D.C. office. During his tenure at NARF, he also taught "Federal Indian Law" as Adjunct Professor at Catholic University Columbus School of Law and at American University Washington College of Law.

Mr. Harper served as a Principal Advisor and Chair of the Native American Domestic Policy Committee for the Obama campaign and then as a member of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team in the Energy & Environment Cluster. After law school, he clerked for Judge Lawrence W. Pierce of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

EDUCATION: University of California, Berkeley, B.A., Sociology and Psychology; New York University School of Law, J.D.  

Joseph N. Blankenbaker was born in Madison, Virginia in 1885. Blankenbaker moved west at the age of 23. After working for a year in Fort Laramie, Wyoming, he arrived in Virgelle, Montana to work on a sheep and cattle ranch owned by his second cousin. In 1918 he left the ranch and began working for the Stockman’s National Bank at Fort Benton, and in 1925 he went to the Scandinavian American Bank at Big Timber. Blankenbaker then moved to Helena and worked for several years in a government loan office. In 1938 he began working for the Northwestern Bank and Union Trust Company in Helena, and in 1944 he resigned to become affiliated with the Northwestern National Bank of Great Falls, where he remained until he retired in 1953. In 1975, at the age of 90, Blankenbaker established a foundation “to express his thanks to the people of Montana for treating him so well.” The Blankenbaker Foundation provides an annual endowment to The University of Montana School of Law to supplement educational programs in professional responsibility, the primary objective being to increase sensitivity to the responsibility for leadership and competence in the practice of law. Blankenbaker is now deceased, but the trust carries on in his name. The Blankenbaker Foundation is managed by three trustees: W. Bjarne Johnson, a private attorney in the firm of Church, Harris, Johnson & Williams, P.C., Great Falls; John Koppelman, Bank President, Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.; and Casey Dawson, Trust Officer, Wells Fargo Private Client Services.